I was awoken early yesterday morning (more like the middle of the night) by flashing lights and the sound of a blasting car horn. To make a long story short, it seems that someone had tried to break into our neighbor’s car. I hopped out of bed, flipped on our exterior lights, and then called our neighbor. They were already awake and aware of what was going on, so I just set our alarm (I had forgotten to do so the night before) and laid back down and tried to go to sleep. Trouble was, I couldn’t…

My mind was racing. We live out in the country. Although there are a decent number of houses on our street, they’re a bit spread out and surrounded by woods. Thus, it would be pretty easy to disappear into the woods and hide out until the coast was clear. So who was out there? And what were they doing?

Given that we’re currently adding on to our house, all I could think about was what a perfect hiding place the shell of our addition would be (it’s been framed and sheathed, but it still doesn’t have any windows. We also have a Porta-Potty out back for the construction workers – what a great hiding place. Well, maybe not great, but effective. And our crawl space… I’d removed the padlock so the contractor could get under the house, but that meant anyone else could get under there, too. Creepy, creepy, creepy.

Not long thereafter, I heard the sound of barking dogs and eventually voices. The Sheriff’s department had arrived and they were searching the area with spotlights.

The following morning I spoke to our neighbor and learned that her husband had grabbed his gun and gone outside to shut the alarm off. As soon as he silenced the alarm, he heard a cell phone go off in the distance. He couldn’t pinpoint the direction, but clearly someone was out there. And given how isolate our neighborhood is, only people who are up to no good would be out and about at that time of night. Thus, he went back in and called the Sheriff.

The funny thing is, after having slept through the initial intrusion (until the alarm went off) our neighbors big, gentle dog was blocking the driveway and refusing to let the deputies pull in. They actually had to call our neighbors and ask them to come out and collar the dog so they could do their job.